Zimmerman hides behind his convenient deity

Zimmerman claims to be sorry that he murdered Trayvon Martin, but also refuses to accept responsibility. And he’s got someone else to blame.

I feel like it was all God’s plan.

So that’s why Hannity was the one to interview him: they needed someone with the conscience of a hyena and the intellect of an insect because anyone else would have puked all over him upon hearing that cliche.

So God plans to use racist assholes to kill black teenagers? At last, we have confirmation that God is a white Republican.

Dear God. Please help Martin’s tribe to be less hysterical and less uppity, so that they become content. Provide them with all the watermelons they need, and fried chicken when they deserve it. Yours Zimmerman.

Just to make sure everyone understands this much :
I don’t believe in Allah either. Or Vishnu, or Zoroaster or Zeus. I find using one of them (Jesus) just as repugnant as using any of the others as cover, and have no special brief about followers of Islam. They’re just as deluded as members of the RCC or the SBC.

It’s not surprising that Zimmerman would go for a Hannity job as his first interview. Sean has been acting as his self-appointed PR flak almost from the beginning, or at least since President Obama made an expression of sympathy toward the Martin family.

That’s what kills me. At first, no one in the conservative media had much to say about this case. Then, a reporter asks the president for comment about it. Obama makes a pretty boiler expression of sympathy to the Trayvon’s family while avoiding any speculation about Zimmerman’s guilt or innoncence. Then, Bam! Everyone at Fox is backing Zimmerman’s side of the story. There can be no question that Zimmerman is innocent and Martin must have been a hoodie-wearing thug.

Disgusting. The right doesn’t really give a rat’s ass about the truth of this case. They only care about using it to score points for their “side”.

Religion is an excellent, if childish, way to avoid responsiblity. Everything can be excused by saying some god wanted it that way or that the debbil was making it happen. It’s no suprise that vermin like Zimmerman want to claim that their god is totally supportive of what they’ve done. It’s just another variant of “God wants me to have a SUV”, “God wants me to force my opinoins on others” and “God wants me to kill people who don’t agree with me”.

If you listen to the sound bites, Zimmerman never apologizes for murdering Martin. He does one of those half not-apologies by saying he is sorry that this happened. He never says that he’s sorry that he murdered Trayvon. I’m guessing that’s because he’s not.

Zimmerman is slime.

Was anyone surprised when the molestation allegations came out? I wasn’t.

I guess Zimmerman believed it was “God’s Plan” for him to murder an innocent unarmed teenager, but he’s not trusting the plan when it comes to the legal proceedings. He’s trying to get his second judge thrown off the case, he lied about his passport and finances to get out on bail the first time. He sure as hell didn’t just walk in, plead “not guilty” and wave his right to a jury trial, and expect that “God’s Plan” would include a sympathetic judge who would find him factually innocent and send him on his way.

When guys like this go to jail they just feel persecuted. Makes me question the whole idea of prison as a punishment- how the fuck would anyone learn what was wrong with their behavior? Its so much easier to just be angry that someone put you in there.

Makes me question the whole idea of prison as a punishment- how the fuck would anyone learn what was wrong with their behavior? Its so much easier to just be angry that someone put you in there.

For the most part, I agree. Prison as punishment or rehabilitation does not (and never will) work.

But quite frankly, I don’t care if scum like Zimmerman learns a lesson– he can be mad at whoever he likes while he’s rotting away in some dank little cell and I will be perfectly pleased with that outcome. In this situation, I think it’s more important to remove him from society at large than to try to change him.

I do have to wonder what his lawyers think about all of this. I mean, it’s their job to keep him out of prison and all this bozo is doing is making it harder for them to do so.

In the interview, Hannity asked Zimmerman if there was anything he would have done differently. Zimmerman answered “no”. Fuck Zimmerman. If anyone asked me that, I would be able to say yes to just about everything in my life, even the raging successes. There is ALWAYS something you would have done differently, even if it was a triffling detail…

I wish him acquittal with the proviso that he never again carry a firearm.

He’s murdered. After that he’s lied (about what happened that night) and then lied some more (about money for bail). I don’t trust him to obey that and not carry a gun. And I’m afraid he’ll only get caught after he shoots someone again.

For the most part, I agree. Prison as punishment or rehabilitation does not (and never will) work.

I never said anything about rehabilitation. I haven’t been convinced that it isn’t a worthy goal. Of course neither punishment or rehabilitation can be accomplished when no one in the system agrees on the purpose of prison, and when the two goals are generally opposites.

But quite frankly, I don’t care if scum like Zimmerman learns a lesson– he can be mad at whoever he likes while he’s rotting away in some dank little cell and I will be perfectly pleased with that outcome. In this situation, I think it’s more important to remove him from society at large than to try to change him.

It is hard for me to understand how you believe this but think prison shouldn’t be a punishment. There isn’t a reason why removing him from society would neccesarily entail letting him “rot”. Psychiatric hospitals keep people out of society and help patients, after all.

In the interview, Hannity asked Zimmerman if there was anything he would have done differently. Zimmerman answered “no”

*BUZZER*

WRONG. The correct answer is, “I would not have followed Trayvon Martin after being told not to. Further, I would not have engaged in an altercation with him. And finally, I would not have discharged my weapon.”

I would also have accepted, “Never would have bought a gun in the first place.”

“I tried to put it in the simplest possible terms for you people, so you’d get it straight, because I thought it was pretty important,” said God, called Yahweh and Allah respectively in the Judaic and Muslim traditions. “I guess I figured I’d left no real room for confusion after putting it in a four-word sentence with one-syllable words, on the tablets I gave to Moses. How much more clear can I get?”

I don’t think prison in general is rehabilitative*. However, punishment for some kinds of crimes is a more effective deterrent than others. If Zimmerman is not convicted, it sends a message to others who would engage in the same kind of deluded vigilante behavior, that the law is behind them. We can’t fucking have that.

**The US prison system is barbaric and loathsome so please know the following is not an endorsement of it.**

In discussions of crime/punishment/rehabilitation we often talk about the interests of society but forget to address the interests of the victim or her survivors.

Accept, for the sake of argument, that whatever punishment is meted out actually has a deterrent effect or conveys something important to wider society that is necessary. That’s one goal accomplished. But what of the sense of justice crime victim families legitimately want to achieve? Yes, I know this is complicated by revenge motivations, and no, I don’t think a victim-family’s understandable pain is an excuse for capital punishment. Please don’t throw this back at me because I’ve just accounted for it.

But remember how we talked about how important it was for women to know that “the community,” or conference organizers, or their social circle had their backs? How it was a further insult to victims of harassment to have those around them gloss over it, refuse to publicly repudiate the harassers? We’re right about that.

It also applies to crime victims and families. It’s not even analogous, it’s exactly the same thing. Caine, for example, has shared her story of having to go back year after year to parole hearings for the murderer who raped her. Having to live with the fear that he may someday be released and it’s her—one of the victims!—responsibility to endure more pain to help prevent that happening. The injustice of it sickens me. In the moral balance it’s crystal clear that her psychological well-being (and that of the other living victims) is of far more moral consequence than any consideration of whether it’s “fair” for her rapist to stay locked up forever. If the cost for some measure of peace for such victims is the perpetrator never gets out, then fine. Any other outcome strikes me as ethically perverse (assuming it’s a zero-sum game, which it might not be).

So even if prison is not rehabilitative, and even if our sensibilities flinch at anything that looks like bloodlust for revenge, what else would we do? How would we address the obligation we have as a society to put greater weight on the well-being of victims than we do on the situation of their attackers?

The spectacle of “tough on crime” prosecutors exploiting the understandable grief of victim-families in order to sway sentencing is repugnant to me. And I’m compelled to repeat that nothing justifies state execution. Yet those families have an interest.

Prison does have one benefit that hasn’t been discussed here yet – it protects society from the offender. He poses no threat to society at large as long as he’s behind bars. I think that’s justification enough for prison.

That’s not strictly true – rather, he poses a significantly reduced threat to society at large as long as he’s behind bars. It is possible, with the right combination of corruption and connections, to arrange harm to come to people on the outside.

Somehow, someway, I am now even more repulsed by these two men than I was before. I think of all the big Faux News talking heads (Beck, Greta, O’Reilly, Hannity, Cavuto) Hannity has always been the one to make me the most angry on a deep level. Why? I mean he’s no more of a stenographer or mouthpiece for the right than any of the others… but something about his flat out arrogance and the joy he takes in being a partisan hack just makes my blood boil.

And though I believe every defendant is entitled to a defense… Zimmerman does not have one. He saw a black kid in a hoodie, grabbed a gun, followed him, confronted him, and then killed him because lo and behold the kid thought he needed to protect himself (which if my reading of Florida’s SYG Law is correct he was allowed to do if he felt in danger). Keep in mind that it was ZIMMERMAN who brought the gun, it was ZIMMERMAN who took it out and used it. Self defense is punching a guy who’s coming at you, not pulling a gun that YOU brought and blasting someone away. And Zimmerman seems to think there is nothing wrong with anything that he did. Anything at all. Sure, he’s sorry he did it, he says, but I think he’d do it again if we could rewind the clock. Sickening.

I don’t agree with those who consider punishment worthless. I have been told (verbally, based on academic textbooks, so no hyperlinks to hand) that it can provide the community with a sense of closure, as well as validation to victims.

As for psychiatric hospitals, they are often not much better than prisons in the U.S. That is not a justification of the brutality of either, just an observation.

I can’t really figure out a good reason why he would choose to do an interview at this point and I can’t imagine his lawyers are happy about it. But then he’s already been fired by one defense team after he stopped taking their calls, put up his own website after they had already established one for him, and contacted the the prosecutor’s office on his own.

AAAARRRRGGGGGGHHHHH! The “god’s plan” defense completely rages me out. I almost wasn’t able to buy my house because my wonderful, loving father and his current wife chose not to help me with a tiny portion of the closing cost, citing that it just “wasn’t in god’s plan” as a scapegoat for continually being cheap and selfish.

So, apparently it’s not in god’s plan for me to carry on the family name, either, because I changed it for me and my family after 30+ years of that sort of gross negligence.

I almost wasn’t able to buy my house because my wonderful, loving father and his current wife chose not to help me with a tiny portion of the closing cost, citing that it just “wasn’t in god’s plan” as a scapegoat for continually being cheap and selfish.

God’s plan:
1. Get the Hispanics and the Blacks to wipe each other out.
2. Show the the Whites that they are made no greater belittling others.
3. Watch the Asians become the new whipping boy.
4. Cackle maniacally.

I wonder why, if he’s the man
Why God made stuff he cannot stand
So much rage, so much hate
You would think he’s pentultimate!

Arrgh, I hate it when idiots justify murder as god’s plan. It’s simply further proof that they haven’t read their holy books.
God’s plan is quite clearly spelled out there in very short words.
—Tethys #41

Deeds, not words. God kills villages, towns, cities and whole peoples in the Bible. Hell, remember Genesis, when he killed everyone but 8 people?! Fucker is a psychotic, homicidal maniac.

Doesn’t this guy have a lawyer?
What lawyer would let him go on any television show without at least demanding to see the edit before it was aired? This was just staggeringly stupid. If the jury find him guilty of murder, or even manslaughter, he has gone on record as expressing no remorse or even sorrow at the fact that a kid is dead. Surely that is going to fuck him right up when it comes time for any sentencing and/or parole hearing.

HANNITY: A lot of time has passed since this incident with Trayvon. How do you feel about it now that you have had some time to reflect on what has happened?

GEORGE ZIMMERMAN: I haven’t really had the time to reflect on it. When I was in jail, obviously I was in solitary confinement and I had a lot of time to think and reflect. I just think it’s a tragic situation, and I hope it’s the most difficult thing I’ll ever go through in my life. But —

the only advantage I can imagine to this fool going on TV and saying anything even remotely like that is the possibility of ruining any possibility of ever finding a jury that could give him a fair trial. still a very perverse thing to do.
As for Hannity it is now beyond a doubt that he is an opportunistic jackal of a human and has no redeeming qualities or respect for anyone except himself. He will take advantage of anything or any situation for personal gain, fame and fortune.